In Asia, Trump keeps talking about Indo-Pacific

When Americans talk about the region that includes China, Japan and Korea, they usually refer to Asia-Pacific—a phrase that’s in the name of the organization whose conference President Donald Trump will attend later this week in Vietnam.

But Trump wheeled out a different phrase in remarks Tuesday that’s rapidly become the watchword of his five-country Asia tour: “Indo-Pacific.”

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“Our alliance is more important than ever to peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and across the Indo-Pacific region,” Trump said at a joint press conference with Korean President Moon Jae-in.

The phrase has circulated in foreign policy circles for years—it was occasionally used by former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It’s lately been promoted by the Japanese, who have been eagerly pushed the idea that they live in a region that stretches all the way to India, a rising power that could provide a counterweight to China.

“It’s about diluting China’s profile, or diluting China’s impact in a larger ocean, in a wider regional context,” said Rory Medcalf, the head of the national security college at Australian National University, who wrote about the phrase in 2013. “I don’t think that’s just a ploy by the U.S. and others. I think it’s a reflection of reality.”

The administration’s use of the “Indo-Pacific” label, which began in the leadup to Trump’s trip with a speech by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and a briefing by national security adviser H.R. McMaster, puts the U.S. on the side of regional allies eager to balance Chinese influence—not just Japan but Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and others.

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Administration officials haven’t yet laid out a detailed vision for what precisely it means by a “free and open Indo-pacific region.” Trump is expected to give a major address on the American relationship with the region at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in Vietnam.

A senior Trump administration official said the White House’s formal statements using the phrase Indo-Pacific were “certainly not” an effort to contain China’s influence.

But the same official also said there was a concerted effort on the part of the Trump administration to affirm the U.S.-India relationship. “We have strong and growing ties with India,” the official said. “We talk about an Indo-Pacific in part because that phrase captures the importance of India's rise.”

Trump has been warm toward Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, welcoming him to the White House with a hug in June.

“I see it as elevating the role of India and bringing together like-minded countries,” said Ely Ratner, a former Asia adviser to Vice President Joe Biden now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But despite repeated threats Trump made as a candidate to label China a currency manipulator and play hardball in economic negotiations, he’s been warm toward Beijing since taking office. He’s sought cooperation from China on corralling the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and seemed to strike up a friendly personal rapport with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the two men met last spring at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The two meet again on Wednesday in Beijing.

While China is not likely to embrace a regional label that elevates a rival, Medcalf said the “Indo-Pacific” worldview is at least in part the creation of Beijing. China’s international endeavors, especially its “belt and road” economic and foreign policy initiative that involves dozens of nearby nations, has spurred its neighbors to look for ways to diminish Chinese sway in the region, Medcalf said.

An administration helmed by Clinton might have been “equally receptive” to encouragement to use the phrase more often, Medcalf said. Still, that Trump arrived in the White House with relatively little foreign policy experience and few long-held positions may have made his White House especially amenable to persuasion from allies.

“There’s a kind of structural inevitability to this,” Medcalf said. “It just so happens that perhaps it’s been easier with the Trump administration to convince some of the key decisionmakers to look at the region in this different way consistently. There’s a real trend here and in many ways the U.S. is getting on board, and that’s a good thing.”